Excerpts

Darling Sarah! This journal is for you isn't it glorious? I saw it & thought of you instantly! Now you can record all your thoughts & your genius & your experiences-to-come! (And are you going to have experiences!) Someday, when you're a creaky sixty-three-year-old granny, you'll read this & remember every one of your marvelous adventures. I am so excited! Have fun writing! Peace forever--Z Wednesday, June 12 Wow. My very own journal. What do you write in a journal? Because I don't really have marvelous adventures--not like my grandmother Z. My grandmother Z could have an adventure just shopping for pencils. One time she left her apartment to buy milk and she didn't make it home for seventy-one hours. That's a marvelous adventure. My big adventure for today was making sure my best friend didn't throw up. Curtis Schwenk--he's my best friend--is exceedingly shy. He does not like being the center of attention or even the perimeter of attention. In school he never talks at all. If he went out to buy pencils, he would be too shy even to ask where the pencils are located and he would go home empty-handed. A huge public thing like graduation is not a place he would ever happily be, even if he was one of the people graduating, which he is not because we have only finished eighth grade. This year, though, Curtis's older brother Win was the speaker at the Red Bend High School graduation ceremony. Curtis's brother got intensely hurt playing football last year, and now he is recovering. Crowds of people came to hear him talk about overcoming the odds and being a fighter while Curtis sat next to him onstage in a necktie looking 100% queasy. I spent the whole speech sending Curtis morally supportive brain waves. Then they gave out diplomas and graduation was over. Everyone said congratulations to everyone else even if there was nothing to congratulate them for. I myself got four congratulations just for standing there. The fourth time, I congratulated the fourth person right back and he did not even mind. For a while I lost sight of Curtis, but then I found him again. Curtis is actually quite easy to find sight of because he is so tall. He saw me and smiled a huge relief-filled smile. "Hey," he said, lifting up his hand. We Palm Saluted. A Palm Salute is where one person touches his or her left palm to the other person's right palm. It is an amazingly fantastic gesture of greeting. Curtis and I invented it. We are, I think, the only people in the world who do it. Curtis's hands are so big that my fingertips only reach his middle phalanx. (That is the scientific name for the middle set of bones in your fingers. I looked it up.) "Hey," I said, smiling at him. Every time we Palm Salute, I smile. "How's Boris?" "Okay, I think. I haven't lifted the cover." "How bad's the smell?" Just then Emily Friend squeezed in next to Curtis. Note that she appeared as Curtis and I were discussing odors. "Hey, Curtis!" she said with that voice she has. "You looked very cool up there." Curtis did not say anything. But he quickly took his eyes off me and instead stared at the ground. He would not even share an eye roll. "Hey, Sarah." Emily always says my name as though she is just remembering it, even though we have been in school together since kindergarten. "Did you tie Curtis's necktie for him? My cousin taught me how to tie ties, and it's very important, you know, knowing how to tie your boyfriend's tie . . . If you ever need anyone to tie it for you, Curtis, I can do it. I know how." Then she gave me a look and she left. A look that means, I don't care what everyone says: I know the truth. I'm on to you. Curtis kept staring at the ground. I tried to think of what I could have said back to Emily. For example: Curtis and I would rather hang out with a dead calf than with you. Or Your name is Emily Friend, but you're really Emily Enemy. But neither of these responses would work. No response works if you only think it up after the person has already left. Finally I said, "So . . . Library? Tomorrow?" Curtis nodded. "After practice." He looked like he wanted to say something else, but I waited and he didnt. Mom was talking to Curtis's sister, D.J.--probably saying congratulations because there weren't any graduates nearby to say it to. Paul stood behind Mom looking dazed. My brother is a little obsessed with Curtis's sister. He has articles about D.J. Schwenk playing boys' football and girls' basketball taped all over the inside of his closet. She awes him. Then Curtis went off with D.J., and I went off with Mom and Paul, and Mom said Emily seemed nice because Mom = clueless. Dad was home from work by the time we got there. He asked about graduation. "In three more years," Dad said to Paul, "that will be you." He clinked his slice of pizza against Paul's, like people in movies do with champagne. "And here's to four more years for Sarah," he added, and clinked his pizza with me. Four years! That's how long it is until my very own high school graduation. I am worried about high school, but not too worried. Curtis will be there. Z is coming for supper tomorrow night--that's why I'm writing now. She will be immensely thrilled with my journaling. She will say that watching graduation is an adventure too. Good night! Thursday, June 13 Today I'll write until Curtis's baseball practice ends and the library opens and we can go work on Boris. It's either write or listen to Paul practice guitar. I have < 0.00 percent interest in that. Curtis Schwenk and I didn't used to be best friends. We were always in the same grade, but we moved in different circles because he is exceptionally athletic and I am exceptionally not. You could say Curtis moved in circles and I moved in uncoordinated blobs. Then one day at recess in seventh grade I found a dead robin. I should have ignored it, because whenever I pay attention to things like that, it always ends badly. Which happened this time too. I was not even touching the robin but only studying it when three boys came by. "That's disgusting!" said Brett Ortlieb. "Kick it!" I tried to stop them because nothing that was once alive should be kicked, but my blocking them only made them try harder while Emily Enemy and her friends made grossed-out expressions at me. That's when Curtis showed up. He was the tallest kid in school even in seventh grade. All of a sudden he was leaning over Brett and staring at him. "Stop," he said. One word. "It's a dead bird! " Brett said. "It's disgusting." Curtis didn't say anything, but he clenched his fists. Even if you were looking only at his face, you could see the clenching. He stared at Brett, and Brett stared back until finally Brett muttered "whatever," and he and his friends walked away. I stood there. So did Curtis. At last I said, "I was trying to figure out how it died." Curtis studied me like he thought I was teasing him. Then he pointed to the gym windows. They were shiny and high--bird high. The robin must have flown into the window and broken its neck. "Oh," I said. "I should have figured that out." At that moment the bell rang and we had to go inside. Curtis was late, though, I noticed. He didn't show up until ten minutes into class. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him sit down. He was holding something longish, with dirt stuck to one end. It was a ruler, I could see finally. He slipped it into his backpack. Curtis had buried the robin. He had dug a hole with a ruler and buried it. Which is exactly what I would have done . . . but I never would have been brave enough to be late to class or swipe a ruler to do it. I was so impressed by all this that I did not think about anything else for the entire rest of the day. A few weeks later, Curtis and I ended up partners for a big project on the scientific elements. We picked hydrogen because it is number 1 (that is a chemistry joke). Curtis brought in pictures of the Hindenburg, which is a famous zeppelin from the 1930s that caught fire because it was filled with hydrogen, which burns extremely easily. When hydrogen burns, it turns into waterand yet the water doesn't put the fire out! Even as Curtis was showing me the pictures and talking about it, he was so shy that he kept stopping, and I was so psyched that he looked like he thought I was teasing. Then he was pleased. He tried to hide it, but I could tell. Our display was amazing. I will not lie. We had models of hydrogen and H2 (because hydrogen likes being in pairs) and H20 (water) and H202 (hydrogen peroxide), and video of the Hindenburg burning, and the formula H2 (hydrogen) + O2 (oxygen) = H20 (water) + heat (burning zeppelin). Our project was so amazing that a high school teacher told us we should make something for the science fair. So last year we made "Desiccation and Its Effects" using dried rats from Curtis's family's farm, and we came in third in the state! Also we started going out. Now we are preparing for the high school state science fair, which is a much bigger deal because we will be only lowly freshmen. Our project is "Skeletal Taxidermy and Bovine Osteology: The Process of Discovery." We are assembling the skeleton of a calf from Schwenk Farm that was born dead. Out of respect we have named him Boris, and we have put him in a burial chamber with lots of dirt over him for the worms and ants and other decay-positive life forms, and a cover on top of the burial chamber so coyotes don't get to him, and now we are waiting for nature to do her work and eat up everything but the bones. It will take about two months, we think. In the meantime we are making the rest of the exhibit. I am extremely certain Emily could never prepare a calf skeleton. I am not so certain that Curtis thinks that's a bad thing. Excerpted from Heaven Is Paved with Oreos by Catherine Gilbert Murdock All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.